


like we're the stars of the human race

by singsongsung



Category: The Martian (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 13:06:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5457503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I haven't read the book, so this conforms to movie canon only. Also, I basically know nothing about space, so please ignore any blatant inconsistencies. </p>
<p>Title from Ellie Goulding's "Burn."</p>
    </blockquote>





	like we're the stars of the human race

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenfoxes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/gifts).



> I haven't read the book, so this conforms to movie canon only. Also, I basically know nothing about space, so please ignore any blatant inconsistencies. 
> 
> Title from Ellie Goulding's "Burn."

It’s a long-ass trip to Mars.

That, Beck knew going in. 

“Things That Took Beck Entirely by Surprise” is another, much longer category, however. He did not know the blind, terrifying exhilaration of a spacewalk. He did not know how the other five people on the Hermes would come to be his whole world. He didn’t know how Vogel would become a mentor to him, didn’t know how Martinez would make him laugh until he was breathless and piss him off like hell, how Lewis would flip so easily back and forth between fondness and sternness, how Johanssen would look at him over her shoulder when he exasperated her, a flicker of something lovely in her eyes.

And he didn’t know, of course, that they’d lose Watney.

 

 

There is a great balance in their crew: Martinez and Watney joking around, Vogel and Lewis the most thoughtful, most serious, he and Johanssen mediating between each set, snorting with laughter at times and sobering up at others. Vogel and Lewis and Martinez talk of spouses and family; Beck laughs with Watney and Johanssen about the worst dates they’ve ever had. They all love to play poker.

There are no other people he’d like to spend years in space with. 

 

 

All of them are fond of Johanssen. She’s the baby of them all by a decade and she looks it, swallowed by her NASA-issued sweaters, sleeves hanging down past her hands. There is something so fresh about her perfectly neat haircut, about the vanilla scent of whatever it is she uses in the shower, the big brilliance contained in her delicate frame. 

Watney treats her like a kid sister, ruffling her hair and sneaking up on her to poke her in the kidneys, making her whirl around. Johanssen takes it good-naturedly and puts salt in the sugar bags to get back at him when he has his morning coffee. There is an easy camaraderie between them. 

Beck is almost envious of it, and yet - he can’t quite treat Johanssen the same way. 

 

 

He finds her in one of the common areas late at night, laying across a couch, laptop balanced against her thighs. 

“Hi,” she says. She doesn’t move at all, looking at him from behind heavy eyelids. Her voice overlaps with the sounds of what she’s watching, British voices interspersed with robotic sounds. 

“Hey,” he says. “Are you watching _Doctor Who_?”

She shrugs, sweatshirt falling off one shoulder. “Maybe I’m a nerd.” 

Beck holds up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not judging.” He smiles slightly. “How could I, right? An idealistic doctor in a spaceship, trying to save the world…” 

Johanssen smiles back, soft and easy. “It’s a time machine, dude.” In the blue light emanating from her computer, her eyes glow. Her hair is mussed-up from lying against the couch, a mess of tangles behind her head. Her lips press together and then part: white with pressure, pink with blood. “Do you want to watch?” 

He joins her on the couch and she sets her computer on the table. When the episode ends they’re both asleep, slumped against opposite armrests. 

 

 

Martinez’s teasing is relentless. 

“Just so cute,” he keeps saying. “So cute. I never thought I’d see something so cute in space.” 

Johanssen shoves a large bite of her breakfast in her mouth and chews. 

“You’ve been up here too long, man,” Beck says after an awkward pause. “Johanssen drooling in her sleep is not cute.” 

Her mouth is too full to respond, so she kicks him under the table. He winces but then he just smiles at her, and there’s the slightest upward tilt at the corners of her mouth. 

 

 

Mars, as expected, is the most amazing place Beck has ever been or ever will be.

“It’s out of this world!” he and Watney keep saying, followed by near-hysterical laughter. Their adrenaline is through the roof. 

On Mars, Beck feels like indestructible. 

Until it turns out he’s not. 

 

 

There is a lot of silence on the Hermes, after. 

Lewis calls in the news to NASA. The rest of them sit around the table with slumped shoulders. 

Somehow, they never catch one another crying. The silences between them turn into spaces and they’re very careful not to catch one another grieving - no one barges in anywhere, and no one suddenly messages you, a voice abruptly in your ear. 

Perhaps it’s too hard to talk about it here, where they cannot escape each other. Perhaps it’s too hard to talk about it at all. 

Beck looks at Johanssen across the table as they listlessly play gin rummy. He sees all his sadness reflected in her eyes.

 

 

There are no rom-com moments. Johanssen doesn’t suddenly put on makeup or appear in a mini skirt and make Beck’s world flip over. There are no boomboxes, no high school slow dance, no playful banter in a coffee shop, no wedding to act as a catalyst. 

It’s just that they’re in space, and she’s beautiful, hair grazing against her cheeks every time she turns, fingers long and lean and skilled, shoulder bones sharp as anything when he touches her back. They’re in space and she’s so damn smart, those flickers of knowledge that pass through her eyes like lightning, the quiet concentration in the shape of her mouth. 

They’re in space, and Watney is dead, gone forever, left on Mars, and every time Beck catches sight of Johanssen in his peripheral vision something in his chest wrenches hard. 

He has two thoughts. First: What if he were dead, gone forever, left on Mars, and he had never said a word? Second, and infinitely worse: What if _she_ were dead, gone forever, left on Mars, and she’d never known the truth? 

 

 

And then there’s this:

Sixteen days after they’ve left Mars, there’s a knock on his door late at night. He opens it clad in sweatpants, bare-chested, groggy-eyed.

“Johanssen,” he says, surprised. 

She looks tired. Her face, around her eyes - it’s older, somehow. “You can call me Beth, you know,” she says. 

“And you can call me Chris,” he offers in return, though he’s quite sure she won’t. 

Johanssen’s sleep shirt is long and her pyjama pants are baggy. “I can’t go to anyone else,” she says. Her voice is a rush, but not the intelligent rush of oral problem-solving. It’s a rush of emotion, confession, and the heavy sadness none of them can shake. “I just need not to sleep by myself. Can I - it can just be like on the couch, that day. I’ll put my head by your feet.” 

Beck feels sad for her, and for himself. He tries not to be attracted to her in this moment, when she’s at her most vulnerable, asking for things he would volunteer to give her, but he doesn’t quite succeed. 

“Beth,” he says. “You can put your head on my pillow.”

 

 

In the morning, she slips out early, before even Lewis will be up. 

“Don’t tell anybody I did that,” she says, and then she’s gone, out the door. 

 

 

Finding out Watney is alive is one part elation, one part anger, and one part heartbreak. 

Deciding to go get him is all parts right. 

 

 

In the depths of the ship, Beth hands him a bomb. There is something poetic about it; she has the power to destroy him in more ways than one. 

She puts the bomb in his hands, puts the bomb on the ship, and then puts her lips to his helmet. Once again, she ducks out before he can say a word, but he can’t help his stupid, teenage-boy grin. 

She wants him to be careful. She wants him to be alright. She wants, apparently, to kiss him. 

Maybe they’re both holding bombs out to one another. Maybe they need to defuse them. 

 

 

The trip back to Earth is as good, if not better, than the trip to Mars. They laugh with one another again, trade tasks in a rotation, listen raptly to Watney’s stories. They have conversations with NASA in which they try to hide smiles as they listen to reprimands - none of them give a damn. Watney is back, Watney is okay. The ease between the crew is infused with gratitude. 

Beck relaxes into something more than friendly with Johanssen. They watch her favourite episodes of _Doctor Who_ and his favourite _Star Wars_ movies late at night. They chat about their families, their childhood ambitions - Johanssen was set to be a ballerina; he, a veterinarian. They laugh together until their stomachs and their cheeks hurt. 

It takes three months for her to kiss him. This time there’s no helmet between them. She’s got soft lips that taste like raspberries. 

“Chris,” she says softly, eyes flooded with hesitation even as her mouth curls into the prettiest, happiest smile. 

It’s been hundreds of days since someone called Beck by his given name, but he still knows, with certainty, that that’s the best it’s ever sounded. 

 

 

For months, they sneak around, waiting until the others are asleep and then sitting close to the windows on the floor, leaning into one another’s shoulders. Johanssen is enchanted with the sky. 

“I’ve always been a night owl,” she says. “I’ve always loved the dark.”

Things are quiet between them for a moment. “I’ve always loved pretty girls in spacesuits.” 

Johanssen shakes her head slightly. “Dr. Beck, you’re such a goofball, has anyone ever told you that?”

He touches her hair, tucking it gently behind her ear. “I’m really happy I know you, Beth.”

She leans in and kisses him, pressing close. Against his lips, she breathes, “Me too.”

 

 

When they’re finally caught, it’s Watney who does the catching. 

Johanssen sits up from where she’s lying beneath him on the couch so fast that they bang heads. Beck closes his eyes as he winces and only opens them when she starts nudging him away, pulling her shirt down with as much dignity as she can muster. 

Watney is grinning. “Well, well,” he says.

Beth has spots of pink high on her cheeks. “Hi,” she says, all nonchalant, like absolutely nothing about this moment is abnormal. 

“Hi,” Watney replies. 

“We were just…” Johanssen trails off. They were just making out and feeling each other up like teenagers. There’s no other way to frame it. She pushes her hair out of her face, still trying to maintain composure. 

Something in Watney’s expression softens. “It’s good, Johanssen. This - you too - it’s good.” A second later, his grin is back. “Now, do you want to tell the class, or should I?”

 

 

“So damn cute,” Martinez says. “Until they manage to get a puppy up here, you guys are it. The cutest thing in space.” 

Smiling, Lewis says, “I knew it.”

“You didn’t,” protests Johanssen. “There was nothing to know. Not until recently.” 

“Maybe not,” Lewis concedes, but then she glances at Beck, one eyebrow lifted oh-so-slightly. 

Johanssen, ever observant, catches that look and turns to him, an inquisitive wrinkle between her brows. Beck slips an arm around her and pulls her against him. “Lewis knows everything, remember?” 

She doesn’t quite buy his lie, a smile starting slow and growing steadily. 

“So cute,” Martinez repeats. 

 

 

Two and a half weeks after they’ve been back on earth, there’s a press conference. Everybody shows up looking so much different than how Beck’s used to seeing them: Lewis is wearing a blazer, Vogel’s wearing a tie, Martinez is sporting a new haircut, and Watney has glasses on. 

Johanssen is wearing a simple dress; she’s got on mascara and lipstick. He watched her put on her makeup, her dress, that very morning, and he’s already counting the moments until he can watch her take it all off. 

Watney and Lewis sit in the middle of the long table. Beck and Johanssen are situated on either side of them, which disappoints him. He wants to reach over and touch her bare knee, wants to joke with her about the habit of the reporter in the front row to cough halfway through each question. 

The atmosphere in the room is bright, joyous. Everyone is happy to be home. Everyone is happy to be alive. Everyone is totally cool with it if they don’t head back to space right away, or maybe even ever again. 

Johanssen doesn’t answer many questions but when she does her answers are sharp, intelligent and quick. The reporters hold out recorders and scribble frantically. Beck feels a flash of pride. 

 

 

When it’s over, the room clears out in a steady stream. Beck moves more slowly, as does Johanssen. They promise to meet the rest of the crew at a bar down the street. 

He watches her pack things up into her purse, apply another layer of lipstick, stand and stretch her lean legs. 

She turns to look at him and cocks one eyebrow. _Stop staring, let’s go_ , it says. 

Beck considers her for a moment and then says, “Beth.” He strides toward her and she smiles, but then covers her mouth. 

“My lipstick,” she reminds him. 

Her kisses the very corner of her mouth carefully. “I think,” he murmurs by her skin, “we should get married.” 

Beth pulls back sharply to look into his eyes. “What?”

He shrugs, and feigning nonchalance, shoves his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “I think you should marry me.” He looks at her for a moment, taking in her shock and the hints of something sweeter flashing across her face. He winks at her and backs away. “Don’t tell anybody I said that.” 

 

 

He’s almost to the door of the room when he hears the lovely sound of her stunned, sputtered laughter. He turns, and she rushes at him with the stars in her eyes. 

 

 

fin.


End file.
